Page 9 of Spirit Storm

Okay, so there’s a lot to unpack in that statement.

“Where is the forge now?” Wylder asks, obviously able to process this stuff faster than me.

“I tethered it into Arcana Academy's pocket dimension.”

“Is that safe? After all the weeks we took tracking it down, how do you know it won’t vanish again, or worse, get taken by someone else trying to find it?”

Mica pegs me with a patient smile. “It's stable, it's safe, and no one can get near it without killing me first, so as long as I’m breathing, no one is accessing the forge.”

Asher blinks. “That’s badass.”

It is. Although I don’t like her being dead to be the limiting factor in keeping the forge from falling into the wrong hands.

But that isn’t really my call.

“What about the cat?” Asher asks. “How are things going with Grumpy Puss?”

Mica winces and gestures toward the duffel sitting on the floor at her feet. “He’s sleeping. And it would be best for everyone if we don’t wake him.”

Asher stares at the bag as if Mica’s words were a challenge and not a warning.

“Asher. No.”

He shrugs and rolls his eyes at me. "I'm not going to open it."

Uh-huh. Sure. I start to respond, but then a wave of magical pressure blows through the room, and I reach to steady myself against the arm of the chair. The hair on my arms stands on end, and my magic surges to the fore.

“What the hell was that?” Asher frowns, looking around.

The sound of an explosion rumbles overhead like thunder rolling during the coming of a storm.

It’s not overtly loud—I think distance swallowed most of it—but I feel it through the floorboards, through the walls, and in the base of my chest.

“Well, that can’t be good.”

CHAPTER THREE

The drive across Emberwood takes six minutes. I know because I watch the clock on the dashboard of Wylder's Jeep the entire time. My knee bounces against the center console while the streetlights stripe the windshield in orange and gold.

"Left here," Caldwell Marsh barks from the back seat. He’s calm, measured, and giving us directions to the disaster site like it’s something he does on the regular.

Who knows? Maybe he does.

Wylder takes the turn, and I check my side mirror to ensure Asher's truck headlights follow close behind. They do. Two bright eyes in the darkness of life’s trials.

Lily and Violet are back there with him. I know I shouldn't have let them come, but I also know I couldn’t really have stopped them if I’d tried.

So, I didn’t.

We are, without question, the willful daughters of Zoe Hallowind.

"Do you smell that?" Mica’s voice is low, and I meet her worried gaze in the rearview mirror.

I do. It’s smoke with the underpinnings of something sharper underneath. Ozone and char, the particular signature of magic discharged catastrophically.

We come around the corner onto a residential street, and Wylder slows the Jeep to a crawl.

What's left of the house sits in the middle of the block. One wall still stands to full height. The rest has collapsed inward, the roof gone, all windows blown out across the lawn in a glittering scatter.